dancing weaver

My name is Gratitude. I am a weaver on Lombok. See the mountain hiding in clouds? It's Rinjani.

My village is at the bottom. Walk past the village co-op sellling cloth and sarongs. Turn right and go down the alley. Keep going.

You will pass women working. They wash cotton, hanging it to dry. Others are dying colors.

You will hear the sound of woman singing and looms clacking.  We are a community of women weavers. We do what we love. You can follow me on FACEHAPPY.

Hello July

The wet, rainy season is a lie layered with truth. 

Rain is a wild and crazy lost midnight rambler. Looking for love. Chasing illusions is aggravation in the whirlpool.

Rain returns to a room under night cover. Mystery is out. 

A sprite of 25 wore the silver flower ring with 7 petals. Consternation in Rain's heart felt the sense of loss forever. Petals transformed tears into hope.

Under a weak light money mama smiled through crooked teeth.

Flower was beautiful in an immature petulant passive way. Her lack of confidence met betrayal.

Rain blossomed her fragrance with instinctual objectivity.

memory 5, 2

this is memory 5. let's see what we don't know through a turkish lens. light and angle. a woman waiting at sophia for someone she's dreamed of in a future arranged marriage, a boy at a sewing machine, an old man walking, a shaft of light on a carpet, yellow pipes and a white cloud at a metro stop, a door surrounded by stone, arches, a halloween ghost. 

this is memory 2. a mudanya baker with his art, a fisherman repairing a net, empty oilve cans, shoes and yellow wall, pans waiting for burnishing, farm tools. life is simple in turkey. 

Marco's Future

Early one morning Orphan and Elf jumped on the local Vomit Comet bus from a rural village to Quanzhou.

They rolled through green Fujian foothills and lush farmland. Men worked oxen in rice paddies. Woman lugged baskets of greens and califlower to market. Children burned plastic trash along the road. Half-finished new rising middle class brick construction projects littered the landscape. The bus stopped. People crowded on. 

45 minutes later they reached the town. Maybe it was a city or a large village. The bus station was packed with peasants, sellers, noodle slurpers, and hustlers among grateful masses. 

They walked through a maze of alleys into the old heart. The heart is a lonely hunter. 

On a sidewalk a man hacked at a fawn selling fresh cuts. People scrambled to buy fresh meat. A woman pedaled past selling yellow carnations. A boy ran pulling a kite. A girl fed her sister. Women scrubbed clothes. An old man smoked in shadows.

At a venerable tea house made of bamboo in a shaded garden surrounded by jasmine they met Marco Polo.

I am on my way West along the Silk Road, he said. I don't know it yet but I will meet Kubliai Khan and stay with him for 3 incredible years. Maybe around 1271. We will play chess together. He will show me his plans to conquer the known world.

Orphan said, Such a grand adventure. We come here every weekend to explore and meet fascinating people and world travelers like you.

Elf said, Yes, and we know a Chinese fortune teller at a pagoda. He's excellent.

May I meet him, asked Marco. Sure, said Elf, Let's go.

They traveled through twisted, convoluted mazes and discovered an enormous pagoda. Red, yellow, golden roofs curved into blue sky. Five-clawed yellow dragons holding white pearls curled corners. Men, woman and children burned incense, mumbling prayers. Red cloth covered Buddha statue faces. Not ready to see. 

There he is, Orphan said, pointing at Confucius behind a table.

Marco introduced himself, What is my future.

Confucius asked Marco questions about his birth date, place, and family lineage. He opened a big brown book with faded yellow pages. He ran a bony finger down lines. He spoke in tongues, Among other adventures you will be imprisoned in Italy. You will tell your stories to another prisoner. You will be famous.

I only told half of what I saw, said Marco, smiling, scrawling notes. Elf made an image for historians.

Thanks Ray

Ray Bradbury has passed at 91.

Venus transits the sun. Ray headed North.

“It was one frenzy after one elation after one enthusiasm after one hysteria after another,” he wrote, noting, “You rarely have such fevers later in life that fill your entire day with emotion.”

Fahrenheit 451, Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, The Illustrated Man, among others.

He never went to college. His university was the library.

A very great and unusual talent.

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

"It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."

Thanks Ray.